New Relationships
99 Questions
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| Event in English with simultaneous translation into German |
| Duration: 90 min |
| English, German |
| Part of: 99 Questions |
Livestream
In this conversation, scholars and practitioners Janet Marstine, Wandile Kasibe and Macarena Gómez-Barris enter into dialogue on the practices and principles of a relational ethics for museums. They discuss how cultural institutions such as museums are in need for ethics that can lead to shaping new relationships in dealing with the colonial afterlife of museums and beyond.
In her short lecture, Janet Marstine will introduce the need for curating through relational ethics, as it pertains to the project of decolonizing museums. She will explain how ethics codes alone are insufficient to address the complex issues that curators face today and need to be bolstered by values-driven approaches. Dr. Marstine will argue that, by signifying the relationships or ‘connectness’ between objects and people, institutions and people and among people, as facilitated by curators, relational ethics has the capacity to address both art world exclusions and inequalities as well as wider social and political concerns.
Reflecting on the issues raised, Gómez-Barris and Kasibe will explore ethics in museums and the curatorial, as they relate to their own research and practice. Macarena Gómez-Barris, who works at the intersections of the visual arts, the environmental media humanities, and decolonial theory and praxis, will discuss extractivism in relationship to territories, art museums, and material infrastructures. In her talk `The Colonial Anthropocene and Reimagining Art Today` Gomez-Barris will highlight issues in relation to ethics in this current moment, by exploring two examples from New York and Chile. Wandile Kasibe from the Iziko Museums of South Africa, will discuss ethics in relation to his research on museums and the construction of race ideologies, as well as by his involvement in the “Rhodes Must Fall” Movement.
PANEL
Janet Marstine has a particular interest in recognizing and supporting the agency of practitioners to make informed ethical decisions. For over fifteen years, through her research, writing and teaching, Dr. Janet Marstine has reinvigorated and redefined the field of museum ethics. In her work as Assistant Professor of Museum Studies/Founding Director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey (2005-2010), subsequently as Assistant and Associate Professor in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, UK (2010-2019) and now as an independent scholar and consultant, she has established a robust research trajectory analyzing ethics topics from museum transparency to curatorial self-censorship to artists’ interventions as drivers for ethical change. Her books include New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (Wiley Blackwell 2006); Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First Century Museum (Routledge 2011); with A. Bauer and C. Haines, New Directions in Museum Ethics (Routledge 2012); Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics (Routledge 2017); with S. Mintcheva, Curating Under Pressure: International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity (Routledge 2020); and with O. Ho Curating Art (Routledge 2022).
Wandile Kasibe graduated with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cape Town (UCT), his thesis is entitled “Museums and the Construction of Race Ideologies In South Africa”. As a student at the University, Kasibe was involved in the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), Fees Must Fall (FMF) movements which sought to question colonial symbolism, institutionalized racism and many other forms of colonial continuity in society today. Kasibe is a Chevening scholar who holds a B-Tech Degree in Fine Art (Border Technikon), Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art (University of Cape Town), MFA, MA in World Heritage (International Training Centre/ILO), and has graduated with a Masters Degree in Museum Studies at the School of Museum Studies at Leicester in the United Kingdom. He has published in various publications, served on numerous boards including the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC). Kasibe also serves on the UCT Rhodes Must Fall Scholarship committee and has travelled quite extensively in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. He is currently the Public Programmes Coordinator of the Iziko Museums of South Africa.
Macarena Gómez-Barris works at the intersections of the visual arts, the environmental media humanities, and decolonial theory and praxis. Her books include “Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile” (UC Press, 2009), “The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives” (Duke University Press 2017) and “Beyond the Pink Tide: Artistic and Political Undercurrents in the Américas” (UC Press, 2018).
Macarena is Founding Director of the Global South Center at Pratt Institute. She was recently awarded a 2022 Andy Warhol Curatorial Research Grant for the exhibition to accompany her forthcoming book At the Sea’s Edge from Duke University Press.
